Storms cause isolated damage in Houma, no injuries, authorities say

Keith Magill, The Courier
·2 min read
A house on Cleveland Street lost its roof to what residents say was a tornado Wednesday afternoon, Dec. 14, 2022, according to Terrebonne Parish officials. Several other houses along the street were damaged.
A house on Cleveland Street lost its roof to what residents say was a tornado Wednesday afternoon, Dec. 14, 2022, according to Terrebonne Parish officials. Several other houses along the street were damaged.

Storms damaged several houses in Houma Wednesday afternoon but left no one injured, authorities said.

Terrebonne Parish President Gordy Dove said residents reported a small tornado damaged several houses in the 300 block of Cleveland Street.

A meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Slidell said Thursday that the agency planned to visit Houma in the next few days to survey the damage and confirm whether it was caused by a tornado or instead by straight-line winds.

Dove said the parish's Office of Emergency Preparedness was working with the Red Cross to secure a hotel for a family whose roof was torn off by the strong winds.

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Dove and Earl Eues, the parish's emergency preparedness director, said no other significant damage was reported in Terrebonne from the storms, which swept across Louisiana late Tuesday and throughout the day Wednesday.

As of 5:30 p.m., Entergy reported that about 230 residents in Terrebonne and 160 in Lafourche were without power, down from several hundred more earlier in the afternoon. All power was restored by later Wednesday night.

Dove said all of the parish's pumping stations were operating and there were no reports of flooding.

Strong winds from a storm knocked down a power pole near Cleveland Street in Houma on Wednesday, Dec. 14, 2022.
Strong winds from a storm knocked down a power pole near Cleveland Street in Houma on Wednesday, Dec. 14, 2022.

Lafourche Parish President Archie Chaisson said there were no reports of significant damage in the parish.

A tornado watch issued by the National Weather Service remained in effect through 8 Wednesday night in both parishes.

The storms, part of a cold front, spawned tornadoes in several parts of the state. The Governor's Office reported three deaths, a mother and child in Caddo Parish and a woman in the St. Charles Parish community of Killona, and several injuries by late Wednesday afternoon. Widespread damage was also reported in New Iberia, on the West Bank in and around New Orleans and in the Arabi area across the Mississippi River.

The Governor's Office of Emergency Preparedness encourages anyone who received damage from the storms to report their information at damage.la.gov. This self-reporting damage survey will help state and local officials identify damage impacts in each region.

This article originally appeared on The Courier: Storms cause isolated damage in Houma, no injuries, authorities say